Omens (The Dark in You #6) - Suzanne Wright Page 0,18

his Primes. The only people who held any importance to Keenan were the other sentinels, Knox, Harper, and Asher.

Khloé wondered if he’d told any of them about their wager. Probably not.

She gave him a quick head-to-toe scan. He wasn’t sweating, tremoring, or showing any other signs of withdrawal. He would soon, though. It was inevitable.

“I gotta get home. Farewell, muchachos,” Khloé loudly called out as she and Raini breezed out of the studio.

She dropped Raini off at her house and then drove straight home. She’d no sooner walked through the door than her parents showed up, wanting to check on her after the Enoch business. It was no surprise. She’d called Penelope and Richie early that morning to tell them what had happened, not wanting them to hear about it via the lair’s grapevine.

While Penelope, Richie, and his mate, Meredith, settled themselves on the cream upholstered sofa, Khloé made coffees. Penelope and Meredith luckily got along like a house on fire. But then, Richie’s mate was easy to like. The stunning redhead also seemed to take it in her stride that Richie had several kids with numerous women.

Maybe Penelope might have felt a twinge of jealousy if she and Richie had loved each other once upon a time, but they’d had nothing more than a shallow fling that had resulted in a multiple pregnancy that shocked the hell out of them both.

It was still a little weird for Khloé to see him all loved-up. Until Meredith, Richie hadn’t stayed with one woman for more than a few years. Khloé had begun to wonder if he’d ever take a mate. It was good to see him happy and settled. She just wished her mother would find that same happiness.

Despite her addiction, Penelope was still a giving and sensitive person who supported, encouraged, and loved her children. But she wasn’t so caring toward herself—she had a self-destructive streak that had been born a decade ago, after she gave birth to a stillborn baby girl. It had broken something in Penelope.

Khloé didn’t judge her mother for looking to numb her pain in some way. But she did judge that her mother insisted on bringing asshole-men into her life—fellow addicts who treated her like shit, spent every cent of her money, and liked to smack her around.

Penelope had occasionally tried overcoming her addiction, but she’d always veered off the path at some point. And the years of denials, lies, broken promises, and useless interventions had taken a toll on their mother-daughter relationship.

Joining her visitors in the living area a few minutes later, Khloé set a tray on her trunk-slash-coffee table. They descended on it, claiming cups and a cookie or two. She sank into her overstuffed armchair and turned her gaze to the partially open window as she sipped at her coffee. Sounds filtered through it—car engines purring, pedestrians murmuring, wind chimes jingling.

“Enoch always seemed like a normal enough guy to me,” said Meredith, adjusting the throw pillow behind her. “A little odd and withdrawn, maybe. I never would have imagined he’d … It’s just horrible to even think of those children’s bodies being used like puppets.”

Penelope nodded. “Losing a child is a pain like no other,” she said, her voice cracking, her sad eyes arrowed on the wall-mounted TV, unseeing—she was stuck in the past. “You’d do anything to hold them again. Anything to bring them back. But reanimate their corpse? No. That’s not bringing them back to life. There’s no life in them.”

Thanks to the layers of makeup and her attempt at contouring, Penelope’s face didn’t look as bloated as usual, the dark smudges under her eyes were hidden, and the red blush-like patches on her cheeks were covered. She always cleaned up before leaving her house, as if she could somehow fool people—particularly Khloé and Ciaran—into thinking she had her shit together and that her alcoholism wasn’t really affecting her body.

“Enoch truly didn’t view them as ‘dead,’” said Khloé. “Or he just didn’t want to—one or the other.”

“Heidi heard what happened,” Richie told Khloé, referring to her youngest half-sibling. “Molly was her friend. She misses her. This shit has brought back all the grief and pain she’d worked through. I’d like to kick Enoch’s ass for that alone. I’d also happily rip out his guts for hitting you with that toxic gas.”

She knew her father wasn’t kidding. Though Richie was often described as a “fixer,” he was no innocent. When he wasn’t producing and selling counterfeit paintings, he was doing “odd