“Peanut!”
He squeaked, flickering out for a moment.
“Don’t you dare disappear!” I charged across the room. “You and I need to chat.”
He reappeared a few feet from the TV. “How dare you scare me like that. You almost gave me a heart attack.”
“You’re dead, Peanut. You can’t have a heart attack.” I folded my arms. “You have a whole lot of explaining to do.”
“I was only watching you sleep the other night to make sure you were breathing.” He floated through the coffee table. “It wasn’t even that long.”
I blinked. “Okay. That’s not what I was planning to talk to you about, so we’re going to have to get back to that.”
“Oh. My bad.” Half of his legs were obscured by the table. “You can always just forget about that.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” I told him.
He looked toward the hallway. “I hear the shower running.”
“Don’t you dare,” I warned him.
“Is that Zayne? Did you bring Zayne back?”
“I did. You would know that if you’d been around.”
Peanut started bopping up and down, clapping his hands. I supposed he was jumping, but I couldn’t see his lower body. “Yay! You did it!” He stopped bouncing. “He’s not, like, evil fallen angel anymore, is he?”
“No, he’s hot, supernice fallen angel now, and stop distracting me.”
“How am I distracting you?” He sank halfway through the coffee table.
I arched a brow. “You’ve been lying to me.”
“About watching you sleep?”
“No. Not about that. About Gena.”
His eyes widened in his nearly transparent head. “What do you mean?”
“There’s no one who lives here named Gena or any variation of that name. I had the apartment records checked.”
He rose from the coffee table. “Have you been checking on me?”
“Yes.”
“I feel attacked.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “I feel—”
“Why have you been lying to me, Peanut?” I interrupted before he could go drama spiral. “And what have you really been doing?”
“I haven’t been lying. Not really, Trinnie.” He drifted toward me. “I swear. You see, I just didn’t clarify some things.”
“I cannot wait to hear what these things are.”
“Well, for starters, Gena is...she’s not alive. That’s why you wouldn’t find her listed on anything. I think she died, like, a couple of decades ago.”
I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth. “You said that there were some things going on with her parents.”
“Not her, like, birth parents. There’s this couple I guess she followed home one day and they’re having problems.” He shrugged. “Or something like that. I honestly think someone’s been stepping out. You know, visiting someone else’s bed. Dipping their ink—”
“I get what you’re saying.” I studied him, still unsure if he was being truthful. Why would he lie now? Then again, why would he have lied before? I heard the shower turn off. “Why didn’t you just tell me that? You didn’t have to make a story.”
He shrugged again. “She’s weirded out about the idea of someone seeing her. No one has been able to, and when I told her about you, she freaked out. Thinks you’re like a witch or something.”
“What?”
He nodded solemnly. “She comes from, like, old puritan times.”
“Puritan times? Peanut, that is more than a few decades old.”
“How am I supposed to know that?” he fired back. “I’m dead.”
“Peanut,” I sighed.
“I’m sorry, Trinnie. I didn’t mean to upset you—”
“Trin?” Zayne called out. “Who are you talking to?”
“Oh, gee whiz, he’s coming in here,” Peanut exclaimed. “I cannot be seen like this.”
“Seen like this?”
“He’s an angel with his grace. Fallen or not, he’ll be able to see me now!”
“What? Why are you freaking out?” Confused, I watched him spin in a circle. “I thought you wanted people to be able to see you? And I clearly remember you complaining when Zayne couldn’t.”
“But I’m not ready for that kind of commitment,” Peanut cried as he threw himself onto the couch.
And then through it.
My brows flew up. “Peanut?” When there was no answer, I walked to the other side of the couch. He wasn’t there. I groaned. “God, you’re such a mess.”
“Trin?”
I turned, and for a moment, I totally forgot about the bizarreness that was Peanut. Zayne stood in the hallway with just a towel wrapped around his waist. Water dripped from the ends of his hair, forming beads that coursed down his chest and over the tightly coiled muscles of his lower stomach.
I felt like throwing myself on the couch.
“You were just talking to someone, weren’t you?”
“Yeah.” I found my tongue and made it work. “It was Peanut. Did you know you’d be able to see him now?”
His brows lifted as he looked around. “I don’t see him.”
“He freaked out and fell through the couch and I guess the floor and whatever else.”
Zayne looked at me. “All right, then. And no, I didn’t know I would be able to see him.”
“He said it’s because you’re an angel,” I explained. “And that does make sense. Angels can see ghosts and spirits.”
“At least I’ll now know when he’s creeping on me.”
“I’m not sure that’s something you’re going to appreciate when he randomly walks through a wall.”
“Good point.”
I cracked a grin, thoroughly proud of myself for holding a conversation while he was so utterly distracting in the most marvelous way. “I did get to ask him about the whole Gena thing.”
“Tell me what he said while I find some clothes.” He skimmed a hand through his wet hair, dragging the strands back from his face.
“He claims that Gena is real, but she’s a dead girl.” I followed him back to the bedroom. “Possibly from the puritan era.”