Azrael starts out the chapter by not listening to Bliss tell her how much to charge for certain services when pretending to be a sex worker while having an internal monologue about how edgy she’s been for days and racking her brains to think of a reason why. Are you stupid? How about the serial killer who’s running around threatening one of the only two friends you have? How about the fact that you’ve been forced into a relationship that you don’t want? How about the fact that you should be feeling a money pinch, since you are not earning a nickel as you have no job and Morty’s been poor-mouthing about how your phenomenally successful comic book still isn’t bringing business into his store? But of course it won’t be anything as mundane as that.
She has a “premonition of dread” (so she knew she’d feel dread at some undetermined future time; maybe danger would have been a better word) and jumps up, sensing this is about Wesley. Isn’t everything, as far as you’re concerned? She tries to leave and Bliss grabs her hand to stop her. Again, nobody in this book can keep their hands to themselves where Azrael’s concerned.
We’re not told that she frees herself from Bliss, so when she “jogs to the front of the house”—so the apartment building Morty lives in has now phase-shifted into its house form—and stops Morty from letting Wesley and Ann inside (and how does she know it’s Wesley and Ann? Fuck you, that’s how), I have to imagine Bliss being dragged behind her like a helpless rag doll.
Azrael tells Morty that he trusts her and he confirms it. Because Wesley and Ann aren’t fully under the spell of her venom, they don’t, and she wants him to delay the two detectives while she escapes through the basement, presumably out that slider window that is the only means of exit from this building other than the front door, as the first book showed. It sure would be convenient if this building had a back door the way every building code in the country requires.
Morty had actually had the foresight to make sure burglars can’t get in through that window and a new door suddenly appears as if by magic in the kitchen that connects to the comic book store he runs, where there’s a window in the backroom that she can use to get into the alley. I do not believe in this door because Azrael would have made use of it at least once to avoid Wesley in the first book if it had existed. I guess someone must have mentioned how this building is a NIGHTMARISH DEATH TRAP after reading the first book.
This is a tense scene, or it should be. Cops are pounding on the door, she knows she’s going to be arrested when they come in, and she’s got to get away. What’s here is way too wordy and moves too slowly to accomplish what it wants to accomplish. Here’s a tighter version, using only the writer’s words.
Bliss droned on, schooling Gaby on costs for various deals, but a disturbing premonition brought her to her feet. This had to do with Luther.
Gaby jogged to the front of the house and caught Mort starting to unlock the door. “Mort, you trust me. But Wesley and Ann don’t.”
Luther’s fist rattled the door. “Mort! Open up!”
“Stall them while I sneak out through the basement.” Gaby headed for the steps.
Mort turned her around. “Go through the kitchen door into my shop. The backroom window will put you into the alley.”
“You’re my hero, Mort.” Changing routes, Gaby rushed through the house.
There cannot be all this meandering in an action scene where someone’s running for their life. All that extra stuff to up your word count belongs in one of those flashbacks to her miserable hell of a life before she met saintly Father Acute-Interest-in-Teenagers or where she’s trying to figure out who the killer is. For action scenes you have to keep things lean and fast-moving to maintain suspense so the audience will feel invested in the character succeeding in getting away.
So Bliss wants to tell her something before she leaves. This is more meandering, and it makes Bliss look stupid because Azrael hasn’t got time to talk right now. Bliss hits her in the shoulder and says, “Yes. Now” just like Scott Hastings’s father in Strictly Ballroom, but there it was a dramatic payoff that served the plot, because Scott’s father had been a passive, quavery nonentity until that point, and then we learn he actually had the one piece of information that could upend Scott’s worldview and help him make an important decision. Strictly Ballroom is good. This is not.
Azrael compromises by letting her follow and talk during the escape through the previously unknown kitchen door into the comic book store. It doesn’t even have a name, just like that nameless “casual but upscale” restaurant with linen tablecloths where Azrael forced herself to eat her only meal in this book. Very few things in this series that should have names do.
They go into the store and we get some more snobbery about Morty when Azrael observes that the store’s been cleaned up and reorganized. That might mean something if we’d seen it before, other than from the outside through Wesley’s jealous, judgmental eyes. There are no customers and apparently nobody on the cash register even though the store is open. He might as well put a sign on the door saying, “Rob me.”
Azrael and Bliss go into Morty’s office, which has the usual things that are found in an office: desk, phone, fax, and “other business devices” that probably include a copy machine but not a computer because those don’t exist in this universe. She remarks that he’s “come up in the world” because he has standard office equipment in his office. How very condescending of you.
Anyway, Azrael starts climbing out the window before Bliss tells her that Luther’s in trouble. She had time before this to say what she needed to say and decided to wait until the most inconvenient possible moment. I think I’m off the Bliss bandwagon. It doesn’t do to have favorite characters in this series because they just get ruined.
There’s some more time-wasting jibber-jabber before Bliss finally spits out that she’s having premonitions of Wesley and Azrael in the extra storage room at Stately Cleaver Manor, which makes Azrael happy because she’ll be able to protect him there. Yeah, this is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds. So Bliss is all girly, trying to hang onto her and telling her not to go because she’s scared.
I don’t care what her aura says, Bliss is one dumb bunny. Azrael’s running from the cops! She doesn’t have time to wipe away your tears and comfort you like her little baby because cops are coming! You are a street sex worker and should have more sense than this.
And then there’s even MORE time-wasting jibber-jabber about Wesley being a good man (nope) who cares about her (only because of his dick) and Azrael expresses a sentiment I would call guilt over—wait a minute. Wait just a fucking minute here.
Azrael knows Cigarette-Burning Man is dead.
There is no way she could know that at this point. Wesley and Ann only just found out about it themselves a few minutes ago. Bliss hasn’t used her convenient psychic powers to tell her. She hasn’t had any premonitions herself other than God calling her pager about Wesley for-real arresting her this time. She was afraid Jimbo Kern was going to have him whacked but took his word that he wouldn’t. How is she stating that he’s dead as a fact? This is such utterly lazy, careless writing.
Anyway, Bliss managed to delay her long enough for Wesley to find his way into the comic book shop and is about to catch Azrael. Good job, you yellow-auraed dumbass! With friends like you, she’ll be in a women’s prison in no time.
At Azrael’s suggestion, Bliss goes back out into the shop so Wesley can’t immediately figure out how she left. Again, this plan is as intelligent as anything a six-year-old could devise. She does manage to get out the window and into the alley before Wesley starts yelling for her.
There’s some time-wasting internal monologuing and she just can’t make herself go. You read right. The multiple murderer who’s terrified of arrest because she’ll be locked up in constant eternal pain while evil runs wild can’t bring herself to escape that fate. Why doesn’t she just escape and then the author does a section break and we’re in Wesley’s POV, if this conversation is so important it needs to be known to us?
Wesley starts interrogating Bliss about where Azrael is and she pleads ignorance. Ann is there, so Wesley isn’t even smart enough to send her around to block an escape through the comic book store. He’s not only a lousy detective, he’s a lousy tactician. Ann reveals the information about Cigarette-Burning Man, including the mutilation, which you would think the police would keep to themselves to cut down on false confessions, and Azrael suddenly has forgotten that she knew he was dead for no reason a page ago. Again, such lazy and careless writing.
There’s some awkward dialogue where Bliss blames Wesley for Azrael running because she can’t keep him safe if she’s in jail. Wesley reacts by saying, “God save me from Gaby’s half-witted delusions of grandeur.”
In the past ten pages, he’s used the words “harebrained,” “foolhardy,” and “half-witted” in relation to her. Again I ask: if he thinks she’s that stupid, what does he want with her? Other than that precious factory-sealed virgin punani, of course.
Azrael overhears this, which is why she couldn’t bring herself to leave, and I can hear the plot gears grinding and rust flaking off them. There was no reason for her not to take off running except that the author needed her to hear this in order for her to be “hurt” and “humiliated.” And just hearing that puts her in such bad physical condition that all she can do as she’s leaving is to “stagger” down the alley. Please remember they’ve been on two dates at this point and have had a handful of public make-out sessions and he fingered her to orgasm in a hospital parking lot with God knows how many people watching. And he’s been angry with her at some point during every interaction they’ve ever had.
Continuing her run as a sheer bubbleheaded nincompoop, she calls Wesley from a pay phone near the store where he can see her if he looks out the window. He’s furious as usual and she lets him know she overheard the conversation with Bliss. He knows he fucked up and wants to smooth things over, but for once the tingling nethers are numb and she doesn’t go for it. I don’t expect that to last more than a couple of pages, though. If Wesley is ruled by his dick, Azrael’s ruled by her thirteen-year-old crush on him and will never leave him. The thing she wanted to call him about was not going alone if he got an anonymous source wanting a meet. Of course he won’t agree since he’s the alpha male and she hangs up after letting him know she’ll eventually crawl back like a whipped dog.
Azrael goes for the trifecta of stupidity when she goes back to her car and follows Wesley when he leaves Morty’s apartment building. Here’s what he does after that: goes to a grocery store and buys some stuff, then gasses up his car and goes home.
Did you catch that? If not, I’ll clarify why I said, “What the fuck?” when I read this section.
At the end of the previous chapter, Wesley and Ann had been advised that Cigarette-Burning Man’s body had been found and of its mutilations. Ann suggests she take his car so she can go to the crime scene and Wesley can talk to Azrael, but he won’t allow it and insists she come with him to Morty’s. Then we get all the time-wasting jibber-jabber in Azrael’s section which apparently kept Lori Foster from remembering the fact that Wesley and Ann were going to a crime scene where they are the detectives in charge.
Wesley has stranded Ann at Morty’s with no way to get to the crime scene unless she borrows Morty’s car and has kissed off his job here to run some errands and go home to sulk because his stalking victim knows what he thinks of her and won’t let him watch her come anymore. This is proof to me that the writer never read this book even one time after she completed the first draft and sent it to the publisher, who must not have even had it proofread for typos and just sent it straight to the printer.
Since this book was worse than the first, I fear for my sanity and my existence with the last one.
So Wesley lives in a “Cape-style” (I think she means a Cape Cod-style) house with a garage in a nice suburban neighborhood with greenery and “immaculate lawns.” What’s the difference between this neighborhood and Cigarette-Burning Man’s neighborhood? Fuck you, that’s what. Unless Wesley kept the house in a divorce, I don’t see a single man living in this area. A sex-obsessed creep like this would want to be downtown, near the bars and nightclubs for easy hookups.
Azrael gives us some detail about the place that underlines how well he keeps up his property and she makes sure to note this is “a real home” (emphasis in the original text) and that makes her mad enough to spy on him through his windows. Her second instance of voyeurism, but at least he won’t be getting a blowjob inside like Trick Dude.
Anyway, he catches her, of course, because she’s every bit the dimwit he thinks she is. If she had one smidgen of intelligence, she would be walking the streets, trying to follow that psychic GPS to Stately Cleaver Manor and deal with Oren. But she’s so butthurt about finding out what Wesley really thinks that she kisses off her sex-worker-protecting mission to follow him, because she’d kill every sex worker in this city with her bare hands to have Wesley finger her again.
And now it’s time for a physical fight between them, since they haven’t had one in this book yet. She almost breaks his nose but he pulls back enough to get hit in the chin. She doesn’t do a follow-up move, he checks to make sure his jaw isn’t broken, and somehow trips her even though she’s just standing there and she winds up flat on her back with him on top of her.
Wesley is furious as usual—it’s described as “incensed”—and gets ready to rape her. I’m sure the author doesn’t have the nerve to follow Wesley’s demonstrated character to its logical conclusion, but how else do you read the following lines?
Incensed, he breathed fire against her face, while at the same time, one of his legs shoved with brute force between both of hers.
She wasn’t moving much, either by way of objection or defense, but still he caught her wrists in an iron grip and wrested both of her hands high above her head.
Then there’s an unimportant dialogue exchange and he kisses her while “[h]is whole big body vibrated with rage.” If Foster were willing to see the implications of what she’s shown about his character, rather than what she’s told us, this book might have some small possibilities, but because she’s married to the romance and her rose-colored view of Wesley, it has none at all.
Azrael manages to break free of him and invites him to fight. For Christ’s sweet sake, she is inhuman in the purity and grandeur of her stupidity. He apologizes and refuses to fight. She jabs at him verbally for a while and he decides to try to seduce her. Hey, play to your strengths, Wesley. She’s inexperienced enough not to know that other men can make her come, so you’ve got that going for you. He also uses the phrase, “Come here, Gaby,” for what seems like the thousandth time in the series.
I hate both of you so much I wish you would spontaneously combust and burn down this entire suburb.
He tells her she’s beautiful, but “[n]ot in the typical sense of shallow society standards. You’re more striking than that.”
Yeah, with the heel of her hand and her head. And are you sure you used enough words that start with S there? Sure you couldn’t jam a few more in? At least the entire book wasn’t about Azrael discovering that she’s beautiful and didn’t know it. It does make sense that she’s beautiful, though, since Wesley and Morty would not have those everlasting boners for her that turn them into her slaves if she weren’t.
He manipulates her by holding out the possibility of a future with him and, after a little persuasion, she does what he wants and sits down with him. Strong Female Character, y’all! He softens her up by getting her to relive the bad memories of what happened to Marie, which she lists as having been beaten, had a tooth knocked out, and been burned with a cigarette. Which again is bad but not as bad as she seems to think it is. Other than the tooth, there’s no permanent damage to her. Also, it was a business deal and thus consensual as we have no information that he did anything they hadn’t agreed on or Marie told him to stop. Azrael holds back tears until her throat hurts with it.
Gaby touched the choker Luther had given her, the choker she never removed, as if that could relieve the restriction.
She says she’s not a pet, but let’s see her take off that dog collar that Wesley thinks makes her his property, the one that she herself thinks is too easily identifiable and that’s why he got it for her.
So he mocks her, she calls him on it, and he backpedals and starts mirroring what Father Acute-Interest-in-Teenagers used to say about her being a “champion” and a “defender.” Maybe he’s a better interrogator that I gave him credit for being because he does get her to confess to beating the holy hell out of Cigarette-Burning Man and is confident somehow that she didn’t kill him.
Wesley’s pretty eager to go for the theory that the killer saw what happened and set her up, so he’s busy looking for zebras when he hears hoofbeats instead of horses. He probably doesn’t want to acknowledge the fact that he’s gagging for sex with a multiple murderer.
So there’s some plot-centered conversation where they figure out what we already know and it isn’t interesting. Wesley starts running his hand over her inner thigh to put her off-balance mentally and starts asking about how sensitive she is to people hurting women and children. Then he goes for her throat with the gotcha question that ends the chapter:
“Tell me, Gaby. Is that because, at some point in your life, someone hurt you?”
And—chapter! I am not looking forward to the next one for two reasons. Number one, since we already know what the writer’s told us about Azrael’s childhood (both versions of it) and nothing in it is worth all the melodramatic adjectives she applies to it, I am dead sure the writer will be retconning faster than a horse can trot. Number two, since they’re at his house, which includes his bedroom, I’ll bet this is where the fucking is.
I’m curious as to why Azrael hasn’t jumped to the conclusion that Jimbo Kern’s the one who killed Cigarette-Burning Man, as a means of getting rid of her. She was obsessed with having Jimbo Kern assure her that he wasn’t going to kill him, and Jimbo Kern did overhear her threats. He would be the most logical person for her to suspect. But the writer knows he didn’t do it and we’re almost to the end of the book, so Azrael can’t be smart enough to suspect the most logical person. But two chapters left, thirty-two pages. We’re almost there, dear readers!
Next time, chapter 15, in which–surprise!–Wesley and Azrael are captured with the greatest of ease by Oren, Dory, and Myer, and end up in the extra storage room at Stately Cleaver Manor. At least Azrael and Wesley won’t be fucking yet, so be grateful for small mercies.
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