The Brightest Night (Origin #3) - Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,32

open windows was catching the blades, keeping them spinning and moving air. It was pleasant in the house, but if temps skyrocketed, no amount of shade or open windows would keep that heat at bay.

My gaze flickered across the living room. I hadn’t really paid any attention to the house before. Part of me didn’t want to see the remnants of the previous owner’s life, but now I couldn’t stop myself from seeing it. A medium-size television sat uselessly on a wooden console, in the center of a row of dark brown bookshelves. Books of all shapes and sizes lined those shelves, broken up by random knickknacks like those white angel statues that looked like little kids. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember what they were called. Some were praying, petting little dogs or cats, and others were on swings or looking up, their little wings spread wide.

Those little figurines always creeped me out. Like, little kid angels were kind of wrong.

The angel theme continued in paintings that adorned the walls. Two chubby thinking angels that also looked like children. A much more serious one of the archangel Michael battling demons hung above the television. Several smaller paintings of guardian angels watching over children and happy couples dotted the walls.

My lips pursed as I eyed the framed photos of Labrador retrievers with furry angel wings sitting on the end tables.

There were a lot of angels but no photos of who’d lived here. My gaze crawled over the walls, finding the outline of where pictures must’ve hung at one time.

I wondered if Dee had done that to prepare the house for Luc and me or if a team of people had gone through the habitable homes, removing the traces of those who’d lived there before to make it easier for others to take their places.

Either way, I couldn’t help but think that if I’d been a part of that team, I would’ve probably taken some of those angel paintings down and stored them where they wouldn’t be staring at the person moving in.

I knew why I was staring at the apparent angel obsession on display. I was trying not to freak out over what Zoe had said. There was no reason to worry. Luc wasn’t going to do it again.

“Are you going to tell me what Eaton had to tell you and Luc?” Zoe asked. “Actually, on second thought, I’m not sure my brain can handle much more.”

“Well, get ready for your brain to implode,” I said, and then I told her what Eaton had told us. She was just as shocked and disturbed to learn that Dasher was alive and all the rest that I shared.

“God.” Dropping the carrot, she plopped her elbows on the table. “Just when you think the Daedalus can’t get any worse, they show up just to prove you wrong.”

“I know,” I murmured, hating the heaviness that settled over me. “I wish Heidi was here right now. She’d probably string together insults from five different countries in her anger—”

“And it would make us laugh, because not only would she probably pronounce them wrong but she’d be so serious about it, too.” Zoe smiled.

“Like when she called my ex a shitboot in Swedish?” I said, laughing. “God, I really do miss her. I hope she and Emery are okay.”

“They’ll be here soon,” Zoe assured me. “Emery is smart. Both of them are. They’ll be okay. It’ll just take them a bit to get here.”

I nodded, dropping my hands to my lap. “I know.” I couldn’t let myself think anything else.

The humor faded as Zoe’s lips thinned, and I knew she had returned to thinking about what I’d shared. “Eaton might believe it all started somewhere good, but I don’t believe that for one second. He wasn’t on the inside like Luc and me.”

I was more inclined to believe Zoe’s perception.

“World domination.” She balled her hands into tight fists before slowly unclenching them. “Sounds stupid and cliché, like a plot of an Avengers movie, but it’s not when you really think about it.”

I nodded. “You know I wouldn’t have believed any of this stuff—that our government was capable of this. And I like to think, pre-Luc, I wasn’t all that naïve, but I wouldn’t have believed it.”

“You weren’t naïve,” she agreed. “And you also weren’t on the Luxen-hating bandwagon even though you’d believed your father had died in the war, killed by one of them.”

Anger and disgust slithered like a viper through me. I hated that