All the Rules of Heaven (All That Heaven Will Allow #1) - Amy Lane Page 0,79

They’re your ghosts, Tucker. But this man—he’s a man who was killed here. They should all be the same.”

“But there were more!” Tucker backed away from the table. “There were lots more than just the twenty-three down on the ground. And what were my ghosts doing here anyway?”

“Well, this place does capture energy. Maybe they were… they were on your mind. You dragged their energy up here.”

“Great. Like I need that on my conscience too!”

“Well, maybe if you let them go from your conscience, they could get off your property!” Angel burst out, frustrated and hurt. “Tucker, you are carrying around too many souls. It’s because you’re a good man—I know that. And you were given a job.” Angel wanted to howl, but he refrained. “A job that would have broken someone without your… your good humor. Your honor. But you have to let go of them. You have to let go of at least one of them.” There was no doubt as to which one he was talking about.

“I don’t know how!” Tucker stood and pounded the wall behind his boxes. “Don’t you think… don’t you think I wanted to live all these years? But what was I supposed to do? I still had to get up every day and wait… just wait for that thing in my chest to pull me to bed. How was I supposed to go somewhere, do something, be anybody, if I got pulled away any time of day or night? And the one person—the one person—I could talk to about it, about how much it sucked, about how strange it was that my whole life was spent being the fuckpuppet of the gods, I killed him with my one act of rebellion!”

“You didn’t kill him!”

Squishbeans meowed and leaped from Angel’s hands.

“Sorry, pussy,” Angel said sadly, and the high tension in the kitchen eased back a touch. “You didn’t kill him,” he said again. “I don’t know why it happened—and you’re right. The divine probably had something to do with it. But….” It was Angel’s turn to stand and pace, although it felt like was moving through gelatin. Something was pushing against him, as though he had a giant sail on his back, but Angel was too preoccupied to figure out what.

“The divine doesn’t do things like that.” Angel stopped pacing, tired out by the forces acting to keep him still. “There is not supposed to be anything cruel in the divine. If the fates are screwing with you, Tucker, there’s got to be another force at work.”

Tucker sank to the table, apparently as tired as Angel. “It would be nice to think the forces of irony weren’t just dicking with me,” he mumbled, laying his head on his arms.

Angel sat down next to him and stroked his hair back with an incorporeal hand. The strands stirred under the wind of his passage, and Angel was content with that for the moment.

“Even if they are,” he said, voice hoarse, “it’s not your fault. You need to let him go.”

“I loved him, Angel.”

“I know.”

“Nobody is going to love me like that.” He wiped his eyes with the palm of his hand. “Ever again.”

“I told you.” Angel felt Tucker’s scalp under his fingertips and closed his eyes, living in the moment, in the touch. “I’ll break all the rules of heaven for you.”

A faint smile tinged Tucker’s lips. “That’s a pretty promise, Angel. What’s it mean?”

A shiver built up then, from the pit of Angel’s groin to the outer edges of his aura, and he clenched his hand in Tucker’s dark curly hair. “I can’t tell you now, but I think we’ll find out.”

Suddenly Angel frowned. “Tucker—what is that thing on your neck?” He recognized it actually. Tucker had looped it over the rearview mirror the day he’d gone out and gotten the truck—the day they’d gotten Squishbeans.

Tucker frowned and straightened in his chair. “It’s Rae’s pendant. I left it in the truck.”

Angel nodded. He could still remember it dangling from the mirror as he and Tucker had driven back in Tucker’s body, while Angel was trying to force out the interlopers.

“But you didn’t have it on last night,” he said.

Tucker sat up and frowned. “No, it’s been in the truck.” He fingered it softly. “It’s not hot. When I first tried it on, it was too hot for me to wear comfortably, but it’s not hot now.” He smiled faintly. “Maybe you broke the rules of heaven and it can protect me now. What do