to him. “That was sleepwalking.”
Brantley glares at me, and the way his eyes flick between my mouth and back to my eyes, makes me shuffle uncomfortably. Pins and needles pinch over my skin. “Yes, but no.”
“The boys are right,” Hector says. “And over the years I was against you ever finding out. I didn’t think you needed to know. When Brantley stepped in and took you, it was agreed that when they started—if they started—he was to manage it.”
“—which I did,” Brantley snaps at Hector. “Until.”
“Until you came back into this life,” Hector finishes. “I underestimated the power of your generation.”
“Okay,” I murmur, thrown off by the revelation that I’m basically a damn freak. This explains a lot of things, but I need to bleed more information out of them anyway, at least before I spill. “What—what should I look out for?”
Hector shrugs. “That I don’t know. It comes in differently for every person.”
I hold my breath, my eyes swing between all of them quickly, shifting so fast, afraid I’ll miss something. I figure I have to read one of them, and one of them only if this is going to work. They can conceal anything far too quickly for me to catch.
I turn toward Brantley. “Ava Garcia.”
Goosebumps swell over my skin, a shiver crawling down my spine. The temperature in the room drops to dangerous levels, and suddenly they’re all silent. It’s fine. They can be silent, because Brantley’s slipup was loud enough for me to have an answer.
“How” —Brantley leans over, his elbows now on his knees while his eyes remain completely on mine—“the fuck do you know that name?”
I square my shoulders, fighting the urge to fidget. “I—I don’t know.”
“You obviously know,” Hector adds, far too calm for my liking.
I cross my arms in front of me. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Explain anyway,” Bishop says, turning his body toward me.
“You won’t believe me.”
Brantley chuckles. “Fucking try us.”
“Okay, but I want the truth. I want your side to what I know.”
“Fucking speak, Saint, my patience is running thin.”
“I see her,” I admit, and because I can’t watch their reactions, my focus falls to the patterns engraved into Hector’s desk. “She, well, she started visiting me in my dreams a little after I first met everyone.”
“Great, the bitch is fucking walking into dreams and trying to tell her truth. Why don’t people just die anymore?” Bishop grunts to himself and I don’t have the energy to ask him what he means by that. They talk about people like they’re disposable.
“It was just that.” I search Brantley’s eyes. “But recently it has become, I don’t know, something else.”
“What do you mean, something else?” Brantley pushes, and I’m well aware how silent Hector is now.
“I mean, I—I actually see her. Like when I’m in the bathroom. It’s no longer only when I close my eyes. And that’s not only it. She showed me what you all did to her.” I lean closer to Brantley, pinning him with my eyes. “Brantley, I felt what you did. Every step of the way. I watched it through the eyes of her ghost. When you killed her, I felt it.”
Brantley winces, baring his teeth and finally dismissing me and leaning back in his chair, his eyes on Hector. “How the fuck do we protect her from a goddamn ghost?”
“Brantley,” I say, but he doesn’t pay me any attention. His jaw is tight, his knuckles turning white as his fists clench. Before I can stop myself, I’m reaching for them. At the connection, he instantly relaxes a little. “I need to know who she is and why she’s doing this.”
“Who she is?” Brantley turns to face me. “Is the product of very fucking bad people, Saint, but why she’s doing it? I don’t fucking know.” He stands abruptly, moving to the other side of the room. He leans against the window, gazing outside. “Bishop knows the story, but Hector, you don’t.”
Hector sighs, leaning back in his chair. “What the fuck did you all do now?”
Brantley chuckles, and I watch as he runs his hand over his face. I squeeze the sides of my chair to stop myself from walking over to him and jumping into his arms. “Remember Elijah?”
“I remember you telling me what he did, yes.”
Brantley’s jaw flexes. “His last name was Garcia.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Hector whispers, shaking his head. “So she was?”
Brantley finally turns to face us, but his eyes are on mine. “She was part of my revenge.”
The grip I have on my chair