Ella unlocks the door of her apartment in Canoga Park. It's only been a few weeks since her move, and she's only half-moved in. She'd lived on the road so long, that her wardrobed definitely needed more pieces. The furniture was delivered, and she had a sweet tv and gaming system for herself. But most of the place isn't quite her yet. The walls are bare, the knick knacks she'd used to have were pawned so now there is a painful dearth of bobbleheads compared to what should be there or would be once she gets more bearings. Her bedroom mostly feels like her, though beyond getting bright yellow sheets and putting up a few Lord of the Rings posters, Ella hasn't really fixed it up enough either. But most of her room now is really devoted to Pepe and his accoutrements.
Now that she has her own place, she went in for one of those huge, four-story fun cages with tubes and even a slide for him. He has now at least three hammocks and it almost makes her wish she could be a chinchilla too. All the hanging out and games, none of the full time job. Sign her up.
Her kitchen is kind of a disaster. She doesn't really have more than paper plates and plastic silverware, and Lord help her, but she can even hear Michael's voice in her head every time she splurges on a food app. It's too often lately, but moving is exhausting as is trying to start a new life. Besides, she has a lot from gambling, and just got a job as a receptionist and IT assistant for a small dojo not far from here. Lucifer's recommendation cut ice (when doesn't it), but she likes to think her resume and skills helped too. It won't be a ton an hour of course, but she gets all the free classes she can squeeze in around her work schedule, and for Ella, that's all she needs.
That's the goal-get her head on straight with martial arts and her ability to work out her Pete phobias in another way. She can't be a vigilante anymore. She knows it, and it's mostly because she almost died the last time. So many times, really. If Michael hadn't moonlit so long as her guardian angel (which he always swore was below his paygrade), she wouldn't be here.
So, she'll have to settle for getting good enough at karate to then teach self defense classes to others. She can't literally punch the creeps but maybe, just like Rae Rae did for her (even if she hadn't known at the time), just maybe Ella can buy other women enough time to survive.
It's what she has, and she is excited to get started.
As she crosses the kitchen's threshold and sets her-okay, Mike, she knows its expensive-carryout pizza on her island, she also rummages in her backpack. Today, she was on a mission. There is not a ghost in her apartment. Oh no. Nothing of the sort. Instead, about a week in, Ella realized with growing dismay that it was gremlin.
She caught the little blue-grey scaled, bug-eyed weirdo sneaking out at 3 a.m. (she still kind of slept like crap) to successfully ruin her earpods.
It was then that Ella also realized that there was so much more out there than even just freaking angels. Michael always said there was, though he'd insisted that dead stayed dead. Rae Rae had seemed to agree with that the few times they'd bumped into each other on the road, though Ella had been pissed reliving her exorcism a lot at the time and still had so many words to scream at Rae Rae-when she figured out what they were besides chingado and fuck on repeat. Yet, she'd really banked on the "dead stayed dead" thing to help her through.
Because sure a three bedroom in L.A. was insanely expensive and this was cheaper than her old place with just the one, and she'd been sure the "ghost" rumors were a mistake.
Ella supposes, in a way, they are. Because a gremlin isn't technically a ghost. The little bugger eats like crazy, so it's alive. It's just a hiccup in her day and, okay, a pain in her ass.
However, that first night she'd caught him shoving her earpods down his throat. So, she'd cut him a deal-she'd buy him crappy electronics to destroy and consume if he left her laptop, phone, and gaming set up alone.
It was an uneasy truce, and she wasn't exactly thrilled to find gremlin crap sometimes by her closet. But, by now, she has an accord with Jango. She brings him the pick of the crappy pawn shop litter, and he leaves her needed electronics alone.
Though, she is going to have to renegotiate a little. He's definitely still going in on her coffee makers (she just lost another one yesterday). For now, however, she pulls the old toaster and plugs it into a socket on the island. The pawn owner swore it worked and she only half-believed in. But, still, she tests it out for herself and while the toast is unevenly cooked (and kind of not cooked at all on the end of one side), the toaster lit up and tried to heat shit.
So, by morning, she hopes Jango will do his worst and done with the toaster as old as she is.
If he tries to touch her xbox, she'll get a broom and start playing hockey with him.
But okay one fed gremlin check. She has her story notes and outline mapped out better after a writing session at a café near her place. A bit of sunshine and the typing of others around her to let her feel a little less hemmed in at her place alone. She still isn't quite sure how Elaine and Ri Ri are going to prove the coroner is corrupt and in on the murders in the book yet, but the wheels are turning. Ella's pretty sure she has another burst of sprints in her after dinner. Which will get cold soon enough!
She grabs a plate, sets a few pieces of pepperoni on it, grabs a Mountain Dew, and heads to her bedroom. Ella makes sure to grab a few slices of dried banana from her cupboard first. After all, even if he's already had his dinner laid out for him (chinchilla feed), Pepe deserves an extra treat too.
Ella can admit to herself she works hard to make sure it's a treat only three times a week. She knows herself. It's very hard to say no to big eyes and three ears, twitching out of sync with each other. If she doesn't stray strong in her resolve, she'll over feed him. And he's magical, but she's pretty sure he shouldn't end up weighing fifty pounds.
Ella pushes open the door to her bedroom and grins at Pepe. He's…also special.
Oh, sure he was always made of archangel (Goddess really) blood and had glow in the dark lavender fur and a prehensile, overly long tail. You know, he's that kind of chinchilla. Or if not a fever dream, kind of the Tigger of chinchillas, completely one of a kind.
But in the last couple weeks, no one was more confused than she was to realize that Pepe wasn't just unusual, he was also smarter by far than the average chinchi. She kind of thought he was, but this is…another level.
He talks.
The first time it happened, she thought she'd imagined it. Then, he'd done it again when the super was over to help her get her AC working right. If her building superintendent hadn't commented on her boyfriend being surly, she'd have thought that she'd imagined things. Even if Azrael had been real after all, it wouldn't be the first time Ella had thought or felt like she was hearing things.
But nope.
Pepe could talk.
A lot.
Which considering his "dad" and where he'd come from, well, it actually made a lot of sense. After all, Mike could talk as much as she could. He'd nattered as much as she had toward Atlanta.
It had been one of the easiest parts of being with him because Ella never worried she was dominating a conversation. No. She never felt he was resenting her the way Pete had. Michael could talk about anything (and that went double for complaining about them); it never felt too much with him.
Her heart clenches, and she shakes her head. What was that? Maybe a minute? She can't tell. It's impossible not to think about Michael all the time. It just is. For months, they were all really the other saw on the road. They shared shitty hotel rooms, dark alleys, and a million roadside diners. She can't help but miss him. Ella knows from the last time they really saw each other that Michael wants her to try to have a normal life, to have one at all, considering for so long after Pete she's felt frozen in place.
She promised she'd try.
And even if normal usually wouldn't or couldn't include archangels and Goddesses and, maybe when she's less enojada, a Devil, Ella still wants to tell normal to go fuck itself.
She wants Michael; she knows she does.
But he's in trouble and locked away, and he wants her happy.
So, she's trying, but it feels as empty as her second bedroom and half her kitchen. Like life without him now is a shadow of what it should be. And that doesn't even touch her dream of the Grand Canyon, of Michael as he must have actually been before his dad-oh you know no big deal just the Big Guy-grew furious and cursed him.
She goes to sleep every night hoping so hard whatever that was will happen again because it might have just been a dream, but it had felt more real than any other she'd ever had. And she just…
It all aches.
But she has a friend to take care of or, sort of, a little "hijo" in Pepe, so she's going to try and be happy. Or fake it. Mamí always said that if she faked it enough, she'd feel it. Granted, Mamí tended to say that to her before dance competitions to help give her that eye of the tiger. Yet for today, Ella is gonna keep trying.
She promised Mike she would.
Honestly, she promised herself too that she deserved more.
She sets the plate down on her night stand as well as the soda. Then, she walks over to the little desk where the tablet is set up and streaming His Girl Friday. Figures. Ella sets the three banana chips out for Pepe and he takes them.
"Thanks, Ma, you're the best."
His voice is small and squeaky and somehow-fuck if she knows how-has a New York edge to it too, something probably Bronxy, and a bit more earthy than even Michael's. She wonders if Pepe glommed onto his own version of his "dad's" accent because Michael made him or just because it was always obvious Pepe adored Mike, even if Mike never quite, uh, warmed to the chinchi back.
She shakes her head and turns off the tablet. "You're going to rot your brain if you watch too many movies."
His whiskers twitch as he picks up a banana chip. He shoves it fast into one side of his face, a bit like a chipmunk. Pepe starts talking before he's finished chewing and little flecks of banana fall to the desk. "Aww, Ma, but it's fun and you were gone forever. Thought you fell down a well or something."
She rolls her eyes. "Manners, Pepe. No seas un grosero; don't be rude. Chew before you talk."
He nods and finishes his other two chips quietly. Then, she holds out her arms and he crawls up them, settling himself on her shoulder the way he's done for months now. She smiles genuinely when his long tail wraps around her left wrist.
It makes zero sense, but it makes her feel safe. And she…she needs that.
Even if it's an illusion.
Ella turns on her own TV and turns it to a documentary she'd only half-watched on the Renaissance and different art patrons. She's trying to use the Nat Geo side of her Disney+ streaming because, well, she has to justify the insane amount of animated movies she watches for someone in her 40s. Besides, Pepe needs to learn and school is probably out.
The sun starts to set outside and as the light dims, Pepe's fur starts to glow.
No, wait, neon lavender chinchillas definitely don't go to school.
Anyway, they cuddle up together, and she can tell by the way he's studying her that Pepe wants to ask her about her day, how she's feeling, and she does want to share. Most of her errands went really well, but she's still floundering to find a shrink, and how could she?
Sure, she can talk about Pete as just Pete.
But the reason she even survived is because her friend, apparently the angel of freaking death the whole time, nudged her to take a syringe that came in handy at the last minute. So she can start talking about Pete but it'll lead to an angel. Even then, if she admits she was coping by getting her inner Buffy on…well on douchebags not vamps…then that leads to Michael helping her and explaining that an archangel, well former, was the one helping her. Bam! Another angel!
What if she just tried talking about her family? Oh sure, because it didn't sound beyond the average urban angst shrink to mention they tried to have her exorcised for seeing a ghost (again loop right on back to the angel of death).
She couldn't even begin to explain how much Amenadiel and Lucifer lying for half a decade or thereabouts had wounded her. Because you know, then the Devil came into all of it. Or, right, now how she had a neon, talking chinchilla and a gremlin as her roommates whether she wanted Jango around or not.
Yeah, sure, she was not getting a straight jacket, so she didn't even know who she could talk to.
As the documentary ends and she finishes her fourth slice, Pepe crawlsoff her shoulder and settles on her stomach. "Can we watch a movie now?"
She tries not laugh. This is like having a toddler or a little kid, she's sure. She knew that Trixie went through a huge Frozen phase because at first Dan liked it and then he couldn't get the songs out of his head, and then he started ranting about Disney plots by the end of it. She supposes it could be worse, but she'd kind of like if he was into The Lion King a lot instead of Humphrey Bogart flicks.
"Can we?"
His tail wraps around the remote. "May we? Permitemé."
She winks at him and pets his fur, which is impossibly soft, and she's been told that's an all chinchillas thing, not just an apparently Celestial chinchilla one. "And what are we going to watch tonight, buddy?"
His whiskers twitch in double time by now. "Can…may we watch The Maltese Falcon again?"
She just stops herself from groaning. It's not a bad movie but all the red herrings on top of red herrings confuse her, but Pepe loves it. He literally lights up brighter as he flicks the right buttons with his tail to pull it up.
"Sure, kiddo, but just the one movie. I promised to get up early to write."
He nods and curls up on her chest to get a better angle for the tv. She's conked out by the time the first ten minutes roll out.
It's how she wakes up much later and there is another movie on. She's pretty sure it's The Harder They Fall but she can't really tell all the Bogie stuff apart. A small, pained part of her thinks that Michael would know, but he's not here.
He won't but if his father decides to keep him on house arrest for decades…or worse.
Ella sniffles and tries to keep the tears out of her eyes as she checks the clock. It's close to one a.m.
"Ugh, Pepe, I thought we had a deal."
"We did," he admits, nuzzling her. Yeah, sure like bribes work. "But Mamí, I couldn't stop at just one."
She's about to say he's a little con artist, when there's a bright glow, and in a few seconds Rae Rae is standing before her. Which, honestly, isn't the person she wants to talk to for at least a few more years because, you know, the exorcism memories are fresh and harsh, and she knows Rae Rae is sorry. She does believe that, but that doesn't change or stop what happened to her.
That her family will always think at best she's nuts and at worst was literally tainted by demons.
She stands up instantly, scoops Pepe up, and takes him to his cage. She deposits him, all while ignoring his objections. He has watched probably three noir flicks while she slept like the dead. Pepe will have to deal with it.
Azrael eyes the cage, and her eyes are as big as hubcaps. "Wait, did he always talk?"
"This is pretty new, toots, what's it to you?" Pepe snaps.
Ella shakes her head. "No, we're not being rude. This is Azrael. She's…well I guess if you think about it, she's your aunt."
Rae Rae gapes at Pepe, who is now drinking from his water bottle nonchalantly. "Man weird, but also that's, uh, going around."
Ella nods. "I do miss Charlie. He's great. Does he have his wings yet? Ooh, any powers?"
Azrael shakes her head. "Nope, he's still mortal, just like Dad said he would be. But he's cute, and he really likes playdough."
She smiles despite the tension in the air. She always tried to make fun science activities for Charlie both before her road trip and after while living with Linda and Amenadiel. Usually, that just meant make gak or use food coloring, but she likes to think some of Charlie's interests are because she was a good science tutor, even if like a two year old didn't really need one.
But, you know, helicopter moms are intense.
Pepe, having decided that his "aunt" isn't that interesting, has finished with his drink and is now curled up in his hammock. Ella's glad for that. He's cranky without enough sleep (definitely got that from Mike), but also, it's hard enough to deal with Rae Rae without commentary from the Peanut gallery.
"That's good," Ella adds warily. "Rae Rae, dude, it's almost two. Either there's an apocalypse, someone's really hurt, or…shit, I'm not dying, am I?"
Rae Rae-again never a freaking ghost, just the Angel of Death all along-shakes her head. "Lopez, no! No way! Of course not, Ella."
"Well, there can't be any good reasons for why you're here in the middle of the night. I mean, the last time we talked…it was a fight."
"I wasn't mad. I'm not mad now."
"I am, and I still am, honestly. I…Rae Rae you're one of my best friends, and some great things in my life wouldn't have happened if not for you. You steered me to be a forensic tech, told me I was smart enough when I was scared to even apply, and I loved that job. I did a lot of good things and solved some gnarly murders."
"Why do I feel a but coming?" she asks, and it's the first time Ella notices the rustling of large wings.
It's surreal but it's dark enough in her room that even with the hint of divinity shining in Rae Rae's wings, she can't see much.
Good. She does not want to end up as a drooling sycophant or to be swayed because humans go bonkers for angel wings.
If there's one thing Ella knows she needs when dealing with all angels-who are lying liars who lie no matter what Lucifer thinks about bluffing-is a clear head.
"But," Ella continues, "I'm still hurt. My family…my past…so much is tangled up with you came to me at all and lied. I was never a medium or schizophrenic or freaking possessed, but everyone treats me like something like that happened. It hurts. I mean, I owe you some but you owe me a lot too, and I just cannot do that only three weeks out of Michael's orbit and not even moved into my place yet."
"So many boxes!" Pepe adds unhelpfully.
She rolls her eyes. "Hijo, duerme ahora, no ve? Can you actually sleep. This is between me and uh your Aunt Rae Rae."
"Sure, Mamí, but she should leave soon. This dame is cramping our style."
There's a rustling now from the hammock, and she assumes he's back to sleeping. Rae Rae looks between the cage and Ella. "Um, I feel I missed a lot."
"He loves detective films, all the hardboiled stuff. Anyway, if no one is dead or on fire, maybe check in next year, Rae Rae? I'm not trying to be a real see you next Tuesday, but…I just don't have anything good to say to you right now."
Even in the dim light, Ella can see Rae Rae's wings droop. She feels shitty, but she also knows she's justified in her anger. Rae Rae changed her whole life-all of it-on some mystery whim. And that's not going to be solved with a few weeks or months even of cooling off. It's just not.
"I'm sorry, and I get it."
"I doubt that," Ella replies coolly. "But, okay, what is wrong? Is Mike? He's not been put in Hell for real, right?"
She almost barfs at the thought. The Big Guy had to be mad, sure, but this…anything but that. Despite her anger, Ella leans forward and grabs Rae Rae's upper arms for support. "Please, please don't be that."
"No, no one's damned and no demons rising."
"Wait? Was that an option?"
"Well, not now that Lu made them rethink any mutinies like a year or so ago, nope."
Ella blinks. She really has missed so much, even with what Michael fills in. "Okay, filing that for later, but the actual problem now. Rae Rae, seriously, you're really scaring me. What's going on?"
"Michael's pregnant."
She laughs. It's the first reaction that comes to her. It has to be. There is no way…but then she's been living with Pepe for a while now, and he's a bit odd (okay super odd), but he does exist, and Mike's blood, just one drop, did that.
Rae Rae doesn't laugh with her. "I'm not kidding."
"I…because he's Creation," she says, but her throat feels dry, so very dry.
Because he's been in prison basically for a few months, but he does have the run of Lux to hunt. Maybe…maybe he did other things too.
"Lopez? Are you okay? Do you need to sit down?" Rae Rae asks.
She shakes her head. "No, I…" Ella stumbles to her bed anyway and grabs her soda. It's flat and warm and about only one third of the can left, but she chugs it anyway to try and get her focus back. "…he met someone?"
Rae Rae's eyes go wide again. "Oh, man, maybe I'm not good at messages. I guess I know why that's Gabe's thing now. Let me start over again, my bad. Lopez, Michael's pregnant, and it's yours."
That's the last thing she remembers before passing out.
