“What’s your name?” Lydia asks again, her voice almost sickly sweet.
“Corey.” Nyx sounds dazed, hypnotized.
I stand there, witnessing two venomous snakes trying to convince each other they’re as dangerous as baby bunnies.
“Corey”—Lydia tips her head to the side, condescending as shit—“you won’t remember seeing me or anything you might have heard, okay?”
Nyx nods slowly.
“After I leave, you’re going to go home and never come back. You can do better than someone who can’t remember your name after leaving bite marks on your shoulder.”
My eyes dip to where Nyx’s shirt has slipped down, her skin red. Then I quickly mutter the amulet’s spell under my breath again for good measure and step forward. “Such a cockblock. Anything else you want to interfere with while you’re here? Maybe hit up the rest of the women in Colorado?”
Lydia’s hands fall to her sides, and she turns around to face me. “Mortals are beneath even you, Chazaqiel. I’ll be back, so don’t get comfortable.”
The second she drops, Nyx reaches for the gold cuff. She almost rips the earring out, her ear pink where it touched. “Why did it burn so much? Usually, the gold just heats up.”
Fucking Lydia. She used too much.
Once I reengage the spell bag, I take off the amulet and go back to rub my thumb over the hot spot. “Good thing you had something to divert the light.”
“Why?” she asks, dagger vision aimed where Lydia was standing.
“Instead of your ear burning, she could have melted your brain.” A problem we learned the hard way when we first arrived. The line between using enough light to shape the human mind and straight-up lighting it on fire could, without a doubt, be wider.
The shadows have lowered the temperature of her skin, and I leave Nyx with a panicked look on her face, flipping off the light as I go to the bedroom. Then I pick up the tie for whenever she recovers and follows me in.
After almost having my brain melted by a gorgeous—and totally in love with Chaz—angel, the days start to run together. In the mornings, Rosdan stops by to work with the blade before he has to nanny his charges. Sometimes, he stays in the living room. The rest of the time, he goes across the hall. In the evening, Cass is around.
I try to stay out of their way. Partly because I still feel like a little girl playing make-believe when in a room with more than Chaz. Mostly though, it’s less awkward for everyone when I lie low. Even though he took me to my apartment and saved me from demons, Rosdan is still cautious around me. Most of the time, he looks like I might attack him at any moment, and then there’s Cass giving off major vibes that he might attack me. So, not only am I stuck in Chaz’s apartment, but I also spend a lot of the time strictly in the bedroom.
A week after escaping the desert, I wake up to the groan I have most mornings. Chaz gets out of bed and isn’t even gone a minute before he shuts the door and crashes onto the mattress beside me, landing on his stomach.
“Rosdan.” His voice is raspy and tired, and he drags his pillow under his arms to lie on. He’s softer when he’s only half-awake. Not just his features, but him in general.
I nudge him before he falls back asleep. “Hands?”
He barely cracks open his eyes as he unfastens the knot and tosses the tie to the end of the bed.
I get up and sort through my bag. I’m almost to the bottom and grab the last top. My knuckles touch metal. Thinking I must have forgotten to unpack something the last time I used the bag, I pull it out.
And then everything stops for a second.
I cover my mouth to hide a gasp when I see the picture that should be hanging in the hallway of my apartment. A black-and-white of Nyla and me from the fifties a few years after her last resurrection. The last time we were in our twenties together. Chaz must have taken it when he went for my body wash and shampoo.
When I look back, his head is buried under his pillow. I go to his side and kneel on the floor, shaking his shoulder. He grunts and tips the pillow up, so I can see him.
“You brought this from my apartment?”
Heavy-lidded eyes search my face before they move to the frame in my hand. “It was probably Ros.”
Then he lifts his head, turning it the other way and putting the pillow down. But I know it was him. Rosdan never left my room.
By the time I’ve showered and dressed, Chaz is still sleeping, so I reluctantly go to the living room. Rosdan glances up from where he’s sitting on the floor with the Dimming Blade. He’s wearing work gloves, refusing to touch the metal. I give an awkward wave to let him know I mean no harm, and he gives a halfhearted smile before lowering his head again.
I think he’s the most different from what Nyla and I imagined. His hair is darker, and his eyes are only a few shades from black. Not as close to the color as Cass’s, and his dimples aren’t as pronounced either.
He adjusts as I move toward the couch, so his back isn’t to me. I’d like to believe it’s to be polite, but I know better. I understand why, but it still bothers me, considering I’ve spent all my lives thinking he and his brothers would adore me from the get-go.
I curl up on the cushion and watch him sift through some of the scrolls he brought with him. From what I’ve overheard while walking to the kitchen or hovering at the bedroom doorway, they’ve figured out how to activate the blade without a human sacrifice. As a previous sacrifice, I am grateful. The problem seems to be getting the light out of the blade. And as the person who dies when they do, I am again grateful.
“Chaz told me about the desert,” Rosdan says after a few minutes. “That you gave him life to heal his stab wound.”
He keeps reading, and I’m not sure if I’m supposed to respond since he didn’t ask a question. But then he glances up, and I nod.
“How does it work? I can’t find records of The Descended or any mention of a race that can influence another being’s soul or whatever.”
I hesitate to answer him. Papa drilled into our heads that, if anyone found out what we could do, they would use it to their advantage. Hex proved him right. First, by killing Nyla when she told me to dump his demon ass, and then again with Abaddon. But if I can help Rosdan find a spell or anything else that can unbind Chaz and Abaddon, they won’t need to kill me.
“Life force.” I sit up and pull my knees to my chest. “Think of it as energy. It can be manipulated and transferred. In my case, it can be generated from the essence in my blood.”
“Can you take it then? Someone’s life?” His interest drifts to my hands, and I tuck them under my legs.
“No. Or maybe in my spiritual form.”
“That’s when the soul leaves the body?” he asks, and I tip my head in question. “I’m an angel, Nyx. I know some shit.”
I give him a small smile. “I’m stronger then, but I’ve never tried.”
Usually, I’m more interested in getting back into my body before anything happens—last time excluded. Then again, until Abaddon, no one had murdered me in cold blood. Other than the guy who ran me over with his car, but he was long gone by the time I flashed through eight years of memories.