Free Angel Eclipsed (The Louisiangel Series Book 2) by C. L. Coffey Page B

tucked it under my arm.
    My intention was to leave the convent and pick a place to read. Instead I found myself at the corner of Bourbon and Dumaine, staring at a yellow two storey building. The building was home to a bar called Bee’s. Downstairs was themed to resemble someone’s idea of hell – red walls, dark lighting, and during the later hours, deep pounding music. Upstairs, with soft lighting, and a cloud theme, was heaven.
    Bee’s was also the bar Lilah had worked in after leaving the convent. As I gnawed at my lip, staring at the unremarkable building, my gut was telling me there was more to this bar. It was closed now, with big black shutters pulled across the windows on both levels. I really wanted to believe Michael and Raphael when they assured me that I shouldn’t worry about Lucifer, but I couldn’t.
    I glanced around. The streets were reasonably quiet. I was at the end of Bourbon Street, which was tapering off into residential buildings, and the number of bars and shops here meant that fewer tourists headed this far down during the day time. Behind me was one of the few bars that were open. The sign in the window announced that they served coffee and homemade crêpes. The upper balcony also had a direct line of sight to Bee’s.
    I headed inside, blinking momentarily as my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting. There were a handful of people seated inside, and one guy behind the bar busy wiping the surfaces down. I headed over and ordered some chocolate crêpes and a drink, and headed straight upstairs to the empty balcony.
    The fans were spinning lazily above me, doing little to combat the muggy air. I commandeered a corner table and positioned myself so I had a clear view of Bee’s. I pulled the newspaper open without really looking at it, and settled in.
    I’d had some sort of romanticized notion that stake-outs were fun. I was wrong. I sat there for hours and not a single person even looked at Bee’s as they walked past. Around me, the bar filled up for lunch, though people mainly stuck to the air conditioned inside, before emptying out again afterwards. I let out a frustrated grunt and turned an unread page with more force than was necessary.
    “Are you a fan?” a voice announced, startling me.
    My eyes fell to the newspaper and onto the singer I’d never heard of, who seemed to have made the headlines for some mischievous antic. I looked up to my side and found the guy from behind the bar towering above me, a towel hanging over his shoulder. His hair was a couple of shades darker than his skin and he had gray eyes which looked almost silver in the shadows. I blinked. How on earth was it that I had gone throughout high school without any interest from boys and now that I was an angel, and an eternity of being single stretched out in front of me, ridiculously good looking ones seemed to be appearing in front of me? My eyes fell on the camera in his hands and I shot upright, discarding the newspaper. “What’s that?”
    He gave me a grin that would have made any girl’s stomach flip flop, and pulled out one of the metal chairs next to me causing it to squeak across the balcony’s tiled floor. He sat down and set the camera on the table next to my half eaten crêpe before focusing his attention back on me. “Ty,” he said.
    “You called it Ty?” I asked, blankly.
    He laughed. “I’m Ty,” he clarified. “And that’s a camera.”
    I could feel the blush starting at my neck and quickly rising up my face to my hairline. “I know it’s a camera,” I told him shortly. “Why was it pointed at me?”
    He cocked his head at me, a grin forming. “I’m sure you get this all the time, but I was hoping you would be my muse?”
    My mouth fell open. “Are you for real?”
    He shrugged, but the grin remained. “I’m an art student and you have just become my subject for my project. That is, if you don’t mind helping out a poor, starving senior?”
    “I don’t know anything about modeling,”